A Drug Enforcement Administration judge has ordered the agency to respond to new allegations that it opposes the Biden administration’s marijuana rescheduling proposal that it is supposed to be defending, and that it had additional improper communications with opponents of the reform.
Just one day after a motion outlining the allegations was filed by several witnesses set to participate in hearings that begin later in January, DEA Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) John Mulrooney issued a briefing order on January 7, mandating that the agency reply within a week.
Village Farms International, Hemp for Victory, the Connecticut Office of the Cannabis Ombudsman, Ellen Brown and My Doc App are ultimately asking the judge to remove DEA as the proponent of the proposed rule to move marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA). “The Government is herein ORDERED to file a response” by January 13. “The Motion for Reconsideration requests a series of relief related to alleged improper ex parte communications between the Agency and other actors,” Mulrooney said . “The Government is herein ORDERED to file a response to the Motion to Reconsider” by January 13.
Part of the pro-rescheduling participants’ motion addresses a new declaration submitted to the ALJ by a DEA official the previous week, wherein the agency pharmacologist seemed to question the basis of the reclassification proposal by echoing “anti-rescheduling talking points in attempting to show that marijuana has a high abuse potential and no currently accepted medical use,” the cannabis groups said in their latest motion.
It says the DEA based its analysis on a legal test that was previously rejected by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), and the agency’s “defiance of OLC’s binding opinion is stunning proof of its open hostility to the Proposed Rule.”
Specifically, when assessing whether marijuana has currently accepted medical value, the DEA used a five-factor review that OLC had described as “impermissibly narrow,” running counter to the two-factor review standard applied by the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to reach the conclusion to recommend rescheduling.
What’s more, the attorneys said the timing of […]
DEA Ordered to Respond to Allegations It’s Conspired Against Marijuana Rescheduling
